


I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

by peppermint_smile



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hate Sex, set early in their working relationship I guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 06:53:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21070709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peppermint_smile/pseuds/peppermint_smile
Summary: But hate is a better distraction than love, and she has little use for tenderness when she can have cruelty instead.





	I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

What they’re doing is wrong. She knows that. It’s wrong and it’s dangerous and it’s really sort of reckless and foolish and stupid because neither of them even bother to pretend at innocence.

And it’s ironic, the way everyone treats her. Dangerous, cruel Tess. Quicker with a gun than a smile, an innuendo, harsh lines and angles under a crooked brow.

But she feels flames too, propped against her ribs where she prefers to hold it.

They all think he is worse, initially. Mean old Joel; a brute, a bastard, gnashing teeth and sparking fuse. But power can flow in more than one direction. The fingers up her ass and the mouth between her thighs prove it.

This isn’t the sort of thing that happens to her, not as often as she’d like anyway, and so she _ makes _ it happen, and it is almost disgusting how easy it is. A twitch of a hip, a come-hither gaze, an act she can put on along with her shoes in the morning. A woman willing to give everything away can take whatever she wants, and there are easier things than to get a man on his knees.

They both hate this place. The walls will close in eventually, and Boston was tarnished long before it claimed her as its own. It is the only thing they have in common, both frustrated, confined, restricted, her by the fears of others and him by his own sense of duty. She is a mage and he a templar; she has no illusions about what this means, about everything this pretend relationship is not.

Brick walls have turned her bitter and as she grinds herself against the rough beard around his mouth, pulls her nipples through the thin cotton of her shirt, she realizes she does not care. He is a warm body, strong arms and a handful of dark hair to grab on to. She doesn’t know what he sees when he looks at her; another faceless memory, an old girlfriend, a fling, it doesn’t matter. They don’t talk; it’s a waste. They don’t need to.

He turns her over onto his bed. He took the time to straighten the blankets on it, and she finds that funny. Joel may not give a shit about the woman writhing on the end of his cock or even remember her name, but he is still gentleman enough to make sure the place is tidy.

He’s big and she feels herself stretch almost to discomfort, still unused to these dangerous little games. But she relishes it, lets the sensation bare her back to the moment and safeguard against idle thoughts. She doesn’t want to think, she just wants to feel, and the heavy pulse between her legs erases the hot flicker in her brain and the flutter she feels in her breast when she stands on the rooftop of her apartment, high above the crumbling cityscape and thinks about how easy it would be to leap.

Sparrows are meant to fly, aren’t they?

But he keeps her tethered to the earth, the weight of him bearing her into the ground, burying her, and she is angry, angry enough to strike him across the face, to raise a red flush across his cheek and a swelling of blood at the corner of his lip.

Blood, her legacy, it might as well be her name; she has no use for demons but she wants to see someone bleed.

When she comes, she comes collared by his hands clamped around her neck and wrists. Belly-up and exposed, a lamb for slaughter, but she is the one holding the knife. She gasps to the cacophony of black sparks at the edges of her vision and the subdued roar of his voice on the periphery of her hearing and for a moment she thinks she might just die, but he is not so kind and much more careful.

It should be intimate but it isn’t, her life is in the palm of his calloused hand no matter where it is. They don’t kiss because that is something that lovers do. Joel loves only an abstract, sorrow and grief, and Tess is far too present, far too real. But hate is a better distraction than love, and she has little use for tenderness when she can have cruelty instead.

**Author's Note:**

> you'd thought you'd seen the last of me huehue


End file.
